


In the fire I call your name out

by ridiculousinconvenientlove (HipsterGavroche)



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-19
Updated: 2017-03-19
Packaged: 2018-10-07 14:01:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10362036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HipsterGavroche/pseuds/ridiculousinconvenientlove
Summary: When Bucky thinks it's the end, he tells Steve what he wishes he could have.(Bucky's POV, The First Avenger canon compliant)





	

**Author's Note:**

> god bless you @audity for being the best beta this shitty world has to offer
> 
> title from dancin in circles by lady gaga which is somehow simultaneously fitting and completely wrong for this fic

Secrets, silent, stony sit in the dark palaces of both our hearts: secrets weary of their tyranny: tyrants willing to be dethroned. – James Joyce, Ulysses

 

My ma would say it’s sacrilegious to be praying to you like this. I don’t know what’s praying or not anymore. But God knows I ain’t got paper with me, and I’m not sure my hands remember how to hold a pencil anyways. So here I am, Stevie. 

I know you can’t hear none of my thoughts, and that’s a damn good thing, too. But maybe one day God’ll be kind enough to let you hear what I got to say. All the things I should’ve said and didn’t. All the things I didn’t know I had to say yet. So here it is.

It’s a miracle I’m not dead yet, t’be honest with you. I’ve been so sick I thought I saw you here, thought I was back in Brooklyn. I’ve been in so much pain that I’ve bit through my tongue, felt my mouth filling up with frothy blood like I was biting down on a blade. They’ve done things I never want you to know about- please Lord never let anyone say a thing about what happened in this place. I don’t care if the bastards holding me here don’t have a damn thing happen to them as long as you never find out what happens in here. You got the soul of a poet, Stevie, and the eyes of an artist. What was it you told me one time? “Everything can be beautiful when you look at it with love.”

I don’t care how much love you got in your soul, pal, there ain’t nothing beautiful here.

It’s been 15 months and 3 days since I last saw you. Before you get up my ass about that, I don’t know the dates for sure, and yes, I’ve been counting. I ain’t got too much pride to admit that.

Sometimes I think it must’ve been longer. I’ve lived lifetimes since I shipped out. But then I’ve probably added weeks. It’s hard when you’re sitting in a cell to measure time. I think I count days more than once sometimes. There ain’t no reason for me to count how long I spend here. It’s not like there’s an end in sight, nothing I’m counting down to. No use in counting the amount of time we’ve been apart.

But here I am. 15 months, 3 days, and maybe a couple’ve hours.

If I got released today I couldn’t go straight home, I think. I’ve seen my face in that steel table. My hair is long, I’m scruffy in a way you wouldn’t like, I’m swollen and bruised and bleeding and skinny and not myself. It’d break your heart to see that, I just know, like it broke my heart to see you every time you came home with a scrape. Before I could come home I’d have to get myself better first. Get myself some hair gel. So I could come home lookin’ whole like you remember, not like a broken piece of shit. 

One time I almost kissed you. I think you know that, though, don’t you? It was after I told you I’d enlisted. We were sitting outside my window. If you asked me, I don’t think I could tell ya which one of us leaned in first. We were so close our noses were almost touching and you were looking right in my eyes. Which I guess means I was looking right in your eyes, too. That moment might’ve been better than a kiss, when I think about it. Nothin’ to taint your memory, nothin’ I did to you that I shouldn’t’ve. But damn me if I haven’t thought every goddamn second about what your lips would have felt like on mine.

There’s some irony for you. I’m in war shooting another man’s brains out and I’m thinking about your lips. I haven’t eaten for days and I can’t even think of food, just kissing you. They’re injecting me with something that burns and I think your touch on my arm felt the same way sometimes.

Goddamn, Steve, don’t miss me. I don’t deserve it. I fucked this all up tryin’ to get you to love me. I should’ve swallowed what I felt because I knew nothing good would ever come from it.

Lord, if you’re listening, don’t tell Steve that last part.

Anyway, Stevie, the reason I’m talkin’ to you- fuck, I wish I was really talkin’ to you- is because this is it for me.

I can’t go on, and that’s the most selfish thing I’ve ever done. I just can’t do it, Stevie. The end of the line. I know you’re out there and by now you must’ve stopped thinking about me too much. You’ll get over it, I know you will. You’re a tough little bastard. You’ll find a pretty girl and be just fine. She’ll be there to hold you through the coughs that rack your body. I don’t gotta do that anymore, right? I can’t, so I gotta tell myself it’s okay somehow. That someone else will keep ya from getting yourself beat beyond repair. 

To be honest with ya, I haven’t really lost all hope. That might be the stupidest thing I’ve ever done, second only to leaving you in the first place. I’ll tell you why, though- we saw POW’s coming back to camp plenty of times. The war might be over by now, the Allied troops marching over here to save us all.

But I’m too fucked up now. I can’t come back. Not to you.

You deserve so much better, and I know you well enough to know that you’ll try to take care of me if I come back to you.

*

Next time they hold my head underwater, I take big gulping breaths.

Sometimes, I used to swim when I was little. It was never with you, though. Your mother wouldn’t allow you, or the doctor wouldn’t allow you, or you were too scared. It didn’t matter. I loved the water. I could glide underwater and shut out the world above me. And sometimes, I would hold my breath so long that I felt dizzy. I was trying to feel how you felt when you walked up a flight of stairs and almost passed out, wheezing and gasping.

That was nothin’ compared to this. God, I hope you never felt this bad.

They pull me up and I retch. One of them swears in German and clubs me with the butt of a gun. Good, I think, let them beat me to death instead. That’s a hero’s death, innit?

You’d hate me right now, giving up in a fight to a damn Nazi. You’re stronger than I am, always have been. You’d fight through anything and then go find someone else to fight for. Let me tell you, Stevie, that shit’s inspirational as hell. Keep doing that. But be more careful now. I won’t be around to save your scrawny ass.

I haven’t drowned yet but I think I’m almost there. I wouldn’t give you the play-by-play, but I’m pretty damn sure you can’t hear what I’m tryna tell you anyway. If you could you’d’ve already crossed the damn Atlantic and gotten here to fight for me, shown up at the door like your avenging ass always does.

There’s water in my lungs, I can feel it. I’m coughing like when I had pneumonia, like you always used to. One more round and I’ll be a goner. I’ll leave you for the world, and go to heaven or hell. Doesn’t much matter which one.

There’s noise around me, so I close my eyes and imagine you instead. A pretty sight to die to, huh. I’ll tell ya, I never much felt the urge to see the pyramids or the Great Wall or the Eiffel Tower, not like you did. There were enough wonders in your face.

When I open my eyes you’re there. Your figure is framed by light, an artist’s dream. I always used to wish you could see yourself, half cloaked in light, the way the shadows contoured your face. I know it’s you, somehow, but you’re different. You were so much smaller in real life. This is just what you’d love to be, huh? Is that what we get after this world, everything we ever wanted? Because you unstrap me and lift me up, holding me close, and I never needed anythin’ else.

You’re sayin’ my name like I might’ve forgotten it. Was he the angel, or are you? God knows he did a hell of a lot more for me in life than save me from a physical hell. Not that I’m not grateful, no, but that boy was sweeter than Mother Mary. My arm clasps around your back and I learn that angels don’t need wings to save our tortured souls. 

  
  



End file.
